


Trails of Debris

by Just_Another_Day



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Drama, Hatred, M/M, Mystery, One-Sided Attraction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 15:05:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16121024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_Another_Day/pseuds/Just_Another_Day
Summary: "I assume I'm to consider myself a prisoner of war. Or perhaps you'd rather just kill me. That's your prefered method, isn't it?"





	Trails of Debris

**Author's Note:**

> I'm throwing this out into the universe as a one-shot at the moment, but presumably at some point after my current WIPs are cleared from my plate I'll make it multi-chaptered because I have THOUGHTS.

Damen bolted awake, heart racing, his body primed to reach for the controls and engage in battle. Even while his eyes were still blinking rapidly, trying to focus, his hand was reaching automatically for his lockbox. The front shield dissipated the moment Damen's handprint pressed against it. It released the weapon that Nikandros had insisted he should always have at hand, even in the safety of his rooms. Even without activating the vibroblade, just having its hilt pressed snugly against his palm calmed him enough to recognise that there was definitely no intruder in the room with him, nor any other evidence of immediate danger. The air had its usual recycled scent, untouched by any hint of smoke. The lights didn't flicker red the way they would have if there was an onboard emergency, and there was no siren blaring to announce an imminent or ongoing attack. In fact, the hallway outside his rooms seemed to be almost entirely silent; there was one set of footsteps passing, but it didn't sound overly hurried.

Damen hadn't been woken by the alert signal he'd grown used to during the war. Instead, the unexpected slowing of the ship had apparently been enough to throw off his equilibrium and startle him into consciousness. It felt like they had almost pulled to a standstill, and were still decreasing speed even now. His body had become so inured to the sensations of velocity and artificial gravity constantly pulling at him for weeks on end that the shift was a shock to his system. 

If there was no emergency, then there was no logical reason for the ship, which was still days from their destination, to now be coming to a halt in the middle of the black.

The image of Damen stalking purposefully towards the bridge was reflected in the heavily burnished bronze, which Basileus Theomedes had insisted on commissioning to line the hallway walls back before Damen had taken over both the ship and the mantle of diplomatic envoy. The sounds of his heavy steps on the floor panelling echoed back at him as well.

Nikandros had already taken control of the bridge by the time Damen arrived. There was a flurry of movement all around the bridge, not panicked but certainly indicative that there was some kind of problem. The room was quiet, though. Tense.

"Status," Damen demanded as an announcement of his arrival.

"We've come upon an unexpected debris field to the starboard side," Nikandros advised. He said it too soberly.

Starboard. Not in front of them. Meaning they wouldn't have needed to slow like this if the point was to avoid it.

Damen peered through the right side-view scope. Those weren't tiny asteroids he was seeing littered all around the vacuum, he realised after a moment. The metal fragments they were floating past looked like shrapnel, twisted and broken.

There was a brief moment of flashing back to years ago, seeing ships in his fleet and the bodies of men who'd served under him left in a similar state. Damen had to suck in a deep breath and grab onto the wall for a moment to ground himself. This was not then. There weren't a wave of ships waiting to reduce them to the same. If there had been any sign of remaining danger on the ship's radar and other sensors, Nikandros would have said so immediately. There were no remaining pieces of the ruined ship large enough to serve as camouflage, and nowhere else to hide. So whatever had done this must be long gone. They were safe. Damen couldn't say the same of anyone who might have been left behind.

"Are there any survivors?" Damen asked.

"The first indication that something was wrong was a distress signal," Aktis announced. He indicated the monitor in front of him, which was dark, showing no activity. "It stopped as we were drawing close. The only power output I can find in amongst all this is minimal. An escape pod, most likely," Aktis said. "It'll take us five minutes to pick through this carefully and get to it unless we want to plough through."

Damen hoped that the fact that the distress signal had ceased didn't mean that the pod's systems were failing. Five minutes might be too long, in that case. But they wouldn't do themselves or the possible survivors any favours if they tore up their own ship and left it inoperable. He gave the order.

"Damen," Nikandros said urgently several minutes later as they neared their destination.

"Yes, I see it. Winch it in."

It was definitely an escape pod. And it was even more definitely Veretian in design. This was the Akielon-Patran trail, well out of the way for any Veretian vessel to rightly be travelling. The most obvious explanation was that they'd just happened upon what remained of a spy vessel. 

Even so, Damen wasn't in the habit of needlessly leaving anyone to die alone in the blackness of space. And Damen's curiosity was certainly piqued about whatever mission they might have had, and what led to it being destroyed, and by whom. The Patrans would never have attacked Veretians, even spies. Damen wasn't aware of any Akielon vessels that had been scheduled to travel the path to or from Patras in the last few days. And anyone else travelling this route would have been just as out of place themselves as this Veretian vessel. Humanitarian efforts aside, Father would expect answers.

There was a slight shudder as the pod was drawn against their docking entrance and magnetically secured into place. 

"How many life signs can we detect on board?" Damen asked.

Aktis answered, "Just two."

Two people? From the sheer amount of metal scattered around, Damen very much doubted it had been some tiny stealth vessel that could be piloted by just two men. His chest felt heavy.

"I guess we'd better go say hello at our guests," Damen commented, more light-hearted than he felt. 

" _You'd_ better, you mean," Nikandros said. "No one else here speaks more than a few choice words of Veretian."

"True. And I don't think 'fuck you' is probably the ideal Veretian greeting for the occasion."

"I wouldn't make that decision too soon. Knowing Vere, if someone blew their ship out of the sky, it would have been justified. I doubt they deserve a friendly reception from us."

"You have heard of the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty', haven't you?" asked Damen.

"Let's go get the proof, then, if we must."

Damen could tell that Nikandros was wishing that Damen wasn't the only one who spoke fluent Veretian, for Nikandros considered him to be neither careful nor suspicious enough for his own good. He would clearly have preferred that someone else – himself, probably – be in charge of dealing with their 'guests'.

The bridge crew remained at their stations, on alert and ready to throw the ship into motion at the first sign of trouble. Or rather, at the third sign. The distress call and the broken remains of a ship were the first and second.

Damen's guards, who had apparently been roused from sleep and ordered to take up arms even before Damen himself had woken, accompanied Damen and Nikandros to the docking area. Pallas, walking along directly by Damen's side, had his blaster drawn and ready. Damen himself still hadn't put down his vibroblade, deactivated but ready.

The outer docking door disengaged mere seconds after Damen sent a message to the bridge to open it. Damen half expected that the pod's own exterior door would remain stubbornly closed. Apparently, the two people inside realised that there would be little point drawing it out like that when Damen's crew could, given time, just enter their pod by force. The pod door slid open. 

If the pod's Veretian design hadn't given away its origin, the sight of the first man who stepped out might have. Or _sauntered_ out, for that was the only word that could rightly describe the way he looked as though it was him rather than Damen who owned the metal he was walking on. Damen had rarely seen such pale skin and fair hair on anyone who did not hail from either Vere or Kempt. And he'd rarely seen anyone quite like this man at all. 

The Veretian walked right up to the second door at the other end of the airlock chamber, which separated the docking point from the rest of the ship, and crossed his arms, waiting impatiently for the decontamination procedures. He stood straight-backed, unafraid despite his position. His chin was tipped up proudly, allowing the overhead lights to catch his features. Damen swallowed heavily.

He was only perhaps nineteen or twenty years of age by the look of him, but there was no doubting that, of the two men on the pod, he was the one in charge. His companion who followed him onto Damen's ship might have been at least a decade older than him, but he didn't have half his confidence or bearing. From the way the second man oriented himself protectively, he appeared to be the younger's guard.

There was a series of sounds as the chamber was scanned for contagions and other potential dangers. As it did so, Nikandros called out in Veretian, "Weapons." 

The Veretian guard withdrew a blaster and placed it on the floor. He then held his hands up, either to show they were empty or in surrender.

The younger man didn't move. Scathingly, in halting and very strangely accented Akielon, he said, "If I'd had the time and ability to actually bring anything with me, it would not have been a weapon that I would have prioritised. More's the pity."

A weapons scan proved him truthful, at least as far as being unarmed was concerned. Only time would tell about his more general honesty.

A green light appeared at the lock. All scans were passed. The secondary door opened, emitting the two into the ship proper.

The blond didn't wait to be greeted as he entered. He announced loudly to the room at large, still in flawed Akielon, "The fact that we turned off our distress beacon should have made it obvious to anyone with even two brain cells to rub together that we didn't _want_ to be picked up by you. So I assume I'm to consider myself a prisoner of war. Or perhaps you'd rather just kill me. That's your prefered method, isn't it?"

In Veretian, Damen replied, "There's no war between us."

"Isn't there?" he asked flatly as he turned to address Damen. Then he paused and visibly paled the moment he actually saw Damen. There was recognition in his eyes.

Damen wasn't overly surprised. As the son of the Basileus, Damen's face was well-known throughout the entire system of Akielos. It was hardly out of the question that images of him might have made their way to Vere as well, especially to a spy flying into Akielon territory. Even among Veretians, though, Damen was surprised that he was capable of causing such potent rage as what he was seeing now. Especially in someone who would have been too young to fight in the war years ago. Perhaps this man had an older brother or father who had never come home. It was a common story on both sides. Too common.

"You actually deigned to come here and do your dirty work yourself, did you, _Your Highness_?" 

Nikandros might not have completely understood the words, but he did understand the tone, which was spiteful, and was clearly mocking as the man said Damen's title. Nikandros stepped forward. In disjointed Veretian, he ordered, "You. Respect proper."

"Oh, I'm showing him exactly the amount of respect he deserves." The man's features had seemed delicate when Damen had first seen him, but that was when they weren't contorted into a vicious scowl, as they were now. 

"You might find yourself really treated like the prisoner you claim to be if you choose to rile up my people without cause," warned Damen.

"You think I don't have just cause?"

"All we've done is rescue you," pointed out Damen.

"Rescue," he repeated flatly. 

"Yes. And you're not acting the slightest bit grateful for it."

"The only way I'll ever be grateful to you is if you do me the favour of dying in front of me. Painfully, if possible, but at this stage, I'm disposed not to be too picky."

"Your Highness," the other Veretian said in caution. It took Damen a moment – and a quiet but reprimanding, "Jord," from the blond, as if the guard had said something he shouldn't have – to realise that wasn't actually directed at _him_.

It had been over ten years since Damen had seen Auguste of Vere in person, before the attempts at diplomatic visits between their two systems had been cut off as tensions escalated, and before all but limited and heavily surveilled audio messages to and from Akielos had been outlawed by Vere. Their paths had thankfully not crossed during the war. And even after the war, Auguste's father had continued to restrict Vere's contact with Akielos. Even after so much time, though, Damen could recall the face of his friend well enough. He could see the resemblance now.

"Prince Laurent of Vere, I assume," Damen guessed. Beside him, Nikandros and several of the guards visibly reacted. The shock in the room was palpable. Of all the people they could have stumbled across in the middle of space, well away from the Veretian territory, that was surely one of the last people anyone could have expected.

"And if I was?" He didn't even really bother to deny it. "Would you kill me?"

Damen frowned. "What do you take us for? We aren't murderers, let alone of unarmed royalty."

Laurent's laugh was harsh, but he said nothing.

Frustrated, Damen said, "Look, I know our systems haven't been on the best of terms, but we'll still extend you every courtesy that your position calls for. We're only four days away from our destination in Bazal. We can take you with us, and contact Vere as soon as we make landfall," Damen offered. "I'm sure Patras will be to make arrangements with your brother to return you home."

Laurent's smile looked sharp enough to slice through a tungsten ship's hull like a hot knife through butter. "Are we really going to pretend? Why bother? It's wasted effort to try to convince me you're in the dark about the whole thing. I know better."

"What?" Damen asked, feeling like he was missing something integral.

But Laurent obstinately refused to answer directly. Even when Damen continued to press. Even when Damen apparently kept touching on something that made Laurent's flare red with unexplained anger. All he would say was: "Faithless savage. He trusted you."

It made no sense.

Eventually, Damen sighed and instructed his men to clear out a relatively comfortable cabin for the two Veretian men to stay in. He also arranged to position several of the guards outside the door. Whatever Laurent seemed to expect of him, Damen obviously couldn't lock the Crown Prince of a system with which they were at least ostensibly at peace in the dank maximum security holding cell down in the belly of the ship. Neither could he afford to leave Laurent unguarded. If nothing else, Damen couldn't extend much trust to him until he found out why Prince Laurent of Vere had been seemingly flying in the direction of Akielos without an invitation. And, given the way Laurent kept looking at him, Damen didn't think it wise to just let the man roam freely around the ship. 

Nikandros seemed surprised by that decision. As if Damen wasn't perfectly capable of seeing Laurent as the threat he was and acting logically. Though, admitted, if he were going by looks alone… 

Well. All right. Maybe he could see what Nikandros might have had some small reason to be concerned about. But Damen wasn't that foolish. It was clear that Laurent hated him, for all that it might be less clear _why_ he would hate him so intensely. Aleron might have instilled some level of contempt and distrust towards Akielos, but Auguste and Damen had remained on good terms even after the war, if distantly so. Enough so that Damen had been hoping that the news of Auguste's recent crowning as King of Vere might herald a positive change between their systems. He'd thought some of that might have rubbed off on Auguste's younger brother.

Laurent let himself be led to his assigned rooms without a fight, and his guard followed his example. But Laurent made sure to give Damen one last look of murderous intent before he pressed the button that turned the door opaque.

Apparently Laurent sharing even some small measure of his brother's good nature was too much for Damen to hope for.


End file.
